I can remember that it was one of those critically acclaimed books I had to force myself to finish, though it had good parts. It didn't transform me, I was just happy that it had ended and that I'd never have to open it again.
What novels have transformed you? I've been reading for nearly 40 years, including a lot of the stuff Ian covers on this channel, and it's something I've never experienced.
Pale King is an underrated masterpiece on the same level as Underworld. 2666 is meandering near relative junk, and I still recognize how its a relatively great piece of fiction. Its just too quantity over quality. Insanely redundant, offers such little thought or varying topics in its entire length
Read it twice-better the second time. It's more "finished" than you give it credit. Also, not "difficult" per se-just long, no modernist games or streams of consciousness to slip in and out of. Second time through I read "The Part About Archimboldi" (probably the best single piece of writing Bolaño ever did) in a single sitting. Can't wait to read it again. Best novel I've read from the 21st century, easy-closest competition being EEG by Daša Drndić. It's essentially of a piece with The Savage Detectives-where SD has an exuberance of youth and potential as infinite horizon, 2666 is the abyss the 20th century slides into as it approaches the 21st. Think about the structure-the infamous "part about the crimes" is the emotional vacuum at the heart of the whole novel, it structures the pieces that sit around it and threatens at all times to pull them in.
A friend and I tried to read this together two years ago. We loved the critiques of academia. We found the part about the critics quite funny and moving. We got to part two and both of us fizzled out and became exhausted by it. The Savage Detectives was one of my favorite books in college, but this one just never got to me emotionally. It didn’t feel worth the work it was asking me to put in. I have read more difficult books but was pushed to read them to know the story. I agree with you that the pieces hold emotional weight, but yeah- the lack of connection was tiring. I felt invigorated by the hunt for meaning in Detectives.
What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.
It's a towering masterpiece, all the more interesting when considering the fact that it came from the region famous for magical realist novels. It's in the line of works of Mario Vargas Llosa, but more poetic and cynical (hence the "666"). 2666 is an apocalyptic, or pre-apocalyptic, realist encyclopedic novel, essentially depicting all the symptoms of degeneration, of a world in a state of delirium: crimes (esp. against weaker nations and women and children), noir, war, impunity, and corruption, capitalistic extraction, exploitation, imperialism, uselessness of words, and meaninglessness because there's no way the problems can be solved and it will only end on way: extinction. Those who live in third-world countries, or in the global south, like me, will pretty much get struck by the novel: it was written for us and it's as real as it can be, the poverty and injustice, and even in the emotional sense of apathy and hopelessness. Almost like a relief, because all we have to do is to wait for the end of things. Much like how Bolano wrote the book knowing he's going to die before it sees the light of day. The murders really happened. Read on how Bolano made a correspondence with a reporter on the feminicide that went on for decades. The title predicts the year the world, or life as we know it, will end. Strangely, Bolano's works feel life-affirming; the more you read him, the more you hunger for life and for books.
2666 is a world constructed around a sentence in Amulet which was a black mirror to the Savage Detectives where everything that was celebrated was is turned into a nightmare. The first section is not making fun academia he already did that in Nazi Literature. He was trying to encourage creative reading which he saw as more important than writing. You only to read Spirit of Science Fiction to see this.
this is one of my favorite novels ever hard to explain why perhaps because so much is said and implied between the lines, so subtly, so masterfully. and that despite the way the narrative scorches across the pages, through time, and beyond. it is a great story. i've read it cover to cover twice, and plan to read it again soon the audiobook is very well done as well and really brings the narrative to life. hard to even fathom what Bolaño might have done with it if he lived another year or two
It’s a masterpiece. Great literature is no longer being written in English-not even great cinema. There’s no Cartarescu, Shishkin, or Tokarczuk. Ian McEwan has lost his way, and Hilary Mantel is gone. Vollmann refuses to let his books be edited, leaving them bloated with endless lists and digressions-though that’s hardly a flaw. Eastern literature thrives without obsessing over action. But the part about the crimes? That’s how it should be done.
Great literature wasn't an only English thing. The problem is that English speaking people focus more in their own culture always. There are hundreds of Japanese, Hungarian, Korean, polish, Romanian books much better than the English "big ones"
I think that you can’t give this book a fair assessment if you are unable to read it in its original language or if you are unfamiliar with the history it pulls from. The devil is in the details and I think the subtle ways in which names are used, for example, have all sorts of connections to ideas that Bolaño is playing with like: “Lalo Cura” which sounds like “La Locura - craziness / madness” (a central theme in the novel) and it has spiritual connotations as Cura means priest in Spanish. For example, once we know about Lalo’s mother’s story, the namesake makes all the more sense. The name Santa Teresa also evokes Teresa Urrea who was a healer and diviner who was a kind of hero to the poor and disenfranchised during the revolutionary period in México and then you have the diviner/soothsayer woman who appears on TV and later in the last book you have Ingeborg with some sort of clairvoyance it appears she might draw from her madness. If I wasn’t a big fan of Mexican history and literature (there are nods to Juan Rulfo and his Pedro Páramo as well) and if I didn’t read Spanish I don’t think I would have the full appreciation of the novel as I currently do.
I don’t think you should start Bolano with 2666. In not sure if you did, but I would not. I do remember parts felt unfinished. Nothing more than that ending. But as a capstone to his career, it works.
the genius is there man. it is a masterpiece. The structure, the simplicity that turning into complex. the charachters. And the most important it was interesting to read. Yeah meaybe the part about the murders was a little bit long. But still.
You did a teir ranking on classics at one point (maybe it was classics in school focused?) I know you don't "review" books per say but I'd love to start reading some great modern litfic and question whether anything is good. I know that sound a bit pompous but I just feel like it's a 1 in ever thousands where as with classics their all just pretty good in their own way.
Reading Bolaño is so 2000's, but Savage Detective was pretty cool. Bolaño's voice was kind of a Nostalgic goodbye to Cortazar, Borges and even Garcia Marquez tradition. But for real, any short story of Borges ir bigger than any text from Bolaño, just read The Analityc Language of John Wilkings
In terms of literary games, Borges is bigger than anyone; that is Borges's world, after all. But beyond that, once you get over the Borgesian themes (mirrors, infinities, doubles, and the like), the style gets tiresome; they're all literary games with nothing at stake, really, compared to what other Latin American writers try to achieve. At a certain remove, Borges lacks depth. Don't get me wrong, Borges is among my favorites, but it's always been a pity he didn't tackle his country's realities: he lived in Argentina after all, where his home was close to political tortures, close enough that he could actually hear it (being blind, he should have heard the cries).
@@deadeyes7558 Interesting ideas. The lack of pollitical agenda and the lack of "latin american" flavor (in the case of Borges, a pollitical agenda in itself ) is whats is more interesting about Borges, instead of playing the Vargas Llosa, Bolaño, Garcia Marquez game, wich in a way is playing the "magical other" to european eyes, to the european other; Borges is the most Hermetic, most post-colonial, and most abstrac and most meta literary writer of his time. That was pure revolution. About the pollitical affilliation of Argentinian writers there is a lot to talk about, specially because almost all of them supported the millitary coups (even if later they retale they own story). (I love Bolaño dont get me wrong)
I didn't like it. First part I was into but by the time I got to him listing murders, I tapped out. Are there any great novels since the 21st century? I liked The Corrections by Franzen but not enough to consider it great
what's up, Ian! Regards from Guatemala! Been listening to you for a while now. Not sure if this is the first time I hear you mention Denis Johnson. Would love to know your thoughts on him... Happy holidays, man! oh, yeah, Bolaño is ok, by the way. haha. Distant star is actually my favourite.
Tienes razón acerca de esta novela de Bolaño, esta no me transformo ni nada por el estilo pero Los Detectives Salvajes, Amuleto o Nocturno de Chile ufffff
2666 is the single worst book I have ever personally read. The prose is flat journalese with a dire scarcity of spoken dialogue for long portions of the "story", the characters are cardboard, and of course none of it adds up in the end, because we can't be having that. Weeks' worth of reading I won't get back.
Interesting I finished it recently and thought it was one of the best I've ever read. Like a David Lynch film in book form. The immensity of the violence, the variety of Perspectives, the dreamlike quality all made it feel like a storm was drawing the whole world into Santa Teresa. Drawing humanity to reckon with it's propensity for violence, their own apathy towards it. Like a great hulking monster lurking just beyond the corner of every page.
I can remember that it was one of those critically acclaimed books I had to force myself to finish, though it had good parts. It didn't transform me, I was just happy that it had ended and that I'd never have to open it again.
What novels have transformed you? I've been reading for nearly 40 years, including a lot of the stuff Ian covers on this channel, and it's something I've never experienced.
Pale King is an underrated masterpiece on the same level as Underworld. 2666 is meandering near relative junk, and I still recognize how its a relatively great piece of fiction. Its just too quantity over quality. Insanely redundant, offers such little thought or varying topics in its entire length
Read it twice-better the second time. It's more "finished" than you give it credit. Also, not "difficult" per se-just long, no modernist games or streams of consciousness to slip in and out of. Second time through I read "The Part About Archimboldi" (probably the best single piece of writing Bolaño ever did) in a single sitting. Can't wait to read it again. Best novel I've read from the 21st century, easy-closest competition being EEG by Daša Drndić.
It's essentially of a piece with The Savage Detectives-where SD has an exuberance of youth and potential as infinite horizon, 2666 is the abyss the 20th century slides into as it approaches the 21st. Think about the structure-the infamous "part about the crimes" is the emotional vacuum at the heart of the whole novel, it structures the pieces that sit around it and threatens at all times to pull them in.
A friend and I tried to read this together two years ago. We loved the critiques of academia. We found the part about the critics quite funny and moving. We got to part two and both of us fizzled out and became exhausted by it.
The Savage Detectives was one of my favorite books in college, but this one just never got to me emotionally. It didn’t feel worth the work it was asking me to put in. I have read more difficult books but was pushed to read them to know the story. I agree with you that the pieces hold emotional weight, but yeah- the lack of connection was tiring. I felt invigorated by the hunt for meaning in Detectives.
What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.
It's a towering masterpiece, all the more interesting when considering the fact that it came from the region famous for magical realist novels. It's in the line of works of Mario Vargas Llosa, but more poetic and cynical (hence the "666").
2666 is an apocalyptic, or pre-apocalyptic, realist encyclopedic novel, essentially depicting all the symptoms of degeneration, of a world in a state of delirium: crimes (esp. against weaker nations and women and children), noir, war, impunity, and corruption, capitalistic extraction, exploitation, imperialism, uselessness of words, and meaninglessness because there's no way the problems can be solved and it will only end on way: extinction.
Those who live in third-world countries, or in the global south, like me, will pretty much get struck by the novel: it was written for us and it's as real as it can be, the poverty and injustice, and even in the emotional sense of apathy and hopelessness. Almost like a relief, because all we have to do is to wait for the end of things. Much like how Bolano wrote the book knowing he's going to die before it sees the light of day.
The murders really happened. Read on how Bolano made a correspondence with a reporter on the feminicide that went on for decades.
The title predicts the year the world, or life as we know it, will end. Strangely, Bolano's works feel life-affirming; the more you read him, the more you hunger for life and for books.
2666 is a world constructed around a sentence in Amulet which was a black mirror to the Savage Detectives where everything that was celebrated was is turned into a nightmare. The first section is not making fun academia he already did that in Nazi Literature. He was trying to encourage creative reading which he saw as more important than writing. You only to read Spirit of Science Fiction to see this.
this is one of my favorite novels ever
hard to explain why
perhaps because so much is said and implied between the lines, so subtly, so masterfully.
and that despite the way the narrative scorches across the pages, through time, and beyond. it is a great story.
i've read it cover to cover twice, and plan to read it again soon
the audiobook is very well done as well and really brings the narrative to life.
hard to even fathom what Bolaño might have done with it if he lived another year or two
It’s a masterpiece. Great literature is no longer being written in English-not even great cinema. There’s no Cartarescu, Shishkin, or Tokarczuk. Ian McEwan has lost his way, and Hilary Mantel is gone.
Vollmann refuses to let his books be edited, leaving them bloated with endless lists and digressions-though that’s hardly a flaw. Eastern literature thrives without obsessing over action.
But the part about the crimes? That’s how it should be done.
Great literature wasn't an only English thing. The problem is that English speaking people focus more in their own culture always. There are hundreds of Japanese, Hungarian, Korean, polish, Romanian books much better than the English "big ones"
Ian do you think his other famous novel “The Savage Detectives” is better than 2666? I have not read either book. Thanks
I think that you can’t give this book a fair assessment if you are unable to read it in its original language or if you are unfamiliar with the history it pulls from. The devil is in the details and I think the subtle ways in which names are used, for example, have all sorts of connections to ideas that Bolaño is playing with like: “Lalo Cura” which sounds like “La Locura - craziness / madness” (a central theme in the novel) and it has spiritual connotations as Cura means priest in Spanish. For example, once we know about Lalo’s mother’s story, the namesake makes all the more sense. The name Santa Teresa also evokes Teresa Urrea who was a healer and diviner who was a kind of hero to the poor and disenfranchised during the revolutionary period in México and then you have the diviner/soothsayer woman who appears on TV and later in the last book you have Ingeborg with some sort of clairvoyance it appears she might draw from her madness. If I wasn’t a big fan of Mexican history and literature (there are nods to Juan Rulfo and his Pedro Páramo as well) and if I didn’t read Spanish I don’t think I would have the full appreciation of the novel as I currently do.
I don’t think you should start Bolano with 2666. In not sure if you did, but I would not. I do remember parts felt unfinished. Nothing more than that ending. But as a capstone to his career, it works.
the genius is there man. it is a masterpiece. The structure, the simplicity that turning into complex. the charachters. And the most important it was interesting to read. Yeah meaybe the part about the murders was a little bit long. But still.
No. No is the answer.
Good on u for this channel ill try support it
It is absolutely in my top twenty five novels.
Well, I live in Chihuahua, give me a couple of months an I'll tell you if he nailed it
Irrelevant
You did a teir ranking on classics at one point (maybe it was classics in school focused?) I know you don't "review" books per say but I'd love to start reading some great modern litfic and question whether anything is good. I know that sound a bit pompous but I just feel like it's a 1 in ever thousands where as with classics their all just pretty good in their own way.
Daša Drndíc's Belladonna & EEG; Mathias Enard's Zone.
this video and the comments section have me pulled in enough to try it out
Reading Bolaño is so 2000's, but Savage Detective was pretty cool. Bolaño's voice was kind of a Nostalgic goodbye to Cortazar, Borges and even Garcia Marquez tradition. But for real, any short story of Borges ir bigger than any text from Bolaño, just read The Analityc Language of John Wilkings
In terms of literary games, Borges is bigger than anyone; that is Borges's world, after all. But beyond that, once you get over the Borgesian themes (mirrors, infinities, doubles, and the like), the style gets tiresome; they're all literary games with nothing at stake, really, compared to what other Latin American writers try to achieve. At a certain remove, Borges lacks depth. Don't get me wrong, Borges is among my favorites, but it's always been a pity he didn't tackle his country's realities: he lived in Argentina after all, where his home was close to political tortures, close enough that he could actually hear it (being blind, he should have heard the cries).
@@deadeyes7558 Interesting ideas. The lack of pollitical agenda and the lack of "latin american" flavor (in the case of Borges, a pollitical agenda in itself ) is whats is more interesting about Borges, instead of playing the Vargas Llosa, Bolaño, Garcia Marquez game, wich in a way is playing the "magical other" to european eyes, to the european other; Borges is the most Hermetic, most post-colonial, and most abstrac and most meta literary writer of his time. That was pure revolution. About the pollitical affilliation of Argentinian writers there is a lot to talk about, specially because almost all of them supported the millitary coups (even if later they retale they own story). (I love Bolaño dont get me wrong)
I didn't like it. First part I was into but by the time I got to him listing murders, I tapped out.
Are there any great novels since the 21st century? I liked The Corrections by Franzen but not enough to consider it great
I liked The Corrections more than, I think, anything he's talked about on this channel, or at least as much.
Bolana or Bologna?
almost time... one and a half more hours till launch
what's up, Ian! Regards from Guatemala! Been listening to you for a while now. Not sure if this is the first time I hear you mention Denis Johnson. Would love to know your thoughts on him... Happy holidays, man!
oh, yeah, Bolaño is ok, by the way. haha. Distant star is actually my favourite.
Tienes razón acerca de esta novela de Bolaño, esta no me transformo ni nada por el estilo pero Los Detectives Salvajes, Amuleto o Nocturno de Chile ufffff
bro. was it not published in 2004?
not the english translation
Nope.
Love 2666. The tone and cynicism ofnthe movel reminded me of Cormac Mccarthy. Bolaño was a huge fan of Blood Meridian.
I implore you to read The Soul Gene. It's short.
Yeah idk I got bored after the part about the critics
no, it's not overrated
Guess what the last four digits are of my Social Security number.
--
Yes
It’s unfinished
2666 is the single worst book I have ever personally read. The prose is flat journalese with a dire scarcity of spoken dialogue for long portions of the "story", the characters are cardboard, and of course none of it adds up in the end, because we can't be having that. Weeks' worth of reading I won't get back.
Have you read, The Savage Detectives? I’m very curious.
Interesting I finished it recently and thought it was one of the best I've ever read. Like a David Lynch film in book form. The immensity of the violence, the variety of Perspectives, the dreamlike quality all made it feel like a storm was drawing the whole world into Santa Teresa. Drawing humanity to reckon with it's propensity for violence, their own apathy towards it. Like a great hulking monster lurking just beyond the corner of every page.
@@nikkivenable73 I haven't. I was curious about Bolano's work at one time, but 2666 basically killed any desire I had to read anything else of his. XD
Based and nice to see you around here.
@@AnonymousAnonposter I do get around on occasion. ;)